Darkness
by Aradia
Summary: Ginny is broken, and can't seem to do anything about it. She is hollow, destroyed, and only one thing can save her, but how saved is she really?


The Darkness  
  
Author's Note: I don't think I've ever written anything like this. I had been having a very odd few days, and had just realized how long it had been since I had written anything. This just came to me, and it hit me hard at 2 o'clock one morning and didn't let me go until it was finished. It is very dark, very unhappy, and I can barely remember writing it. I just thought I would give you a warning. I hope you enjoy this bit of my madness!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
I touched the darkness and it ruined me. It stripped me of my innocence and destroyed any chance I had of a normal life. I look around now and see the other girls my age talking about boys and dates and all the "normal" things a young woman is supposed to think about, and yet I can't think or feel the way they do.  
  
My darkness hit me when I was 11, when I first met Tom. At first, I thought he was my own personal diary friend, and I could tell him anything. Then things started to get weird, and I was afraid of him. And I had good reason.  
  
When he took me into the chamber, more happened than anyone will ever know. In the darkness of the chamber of secrets, he broke me mind, spirit, and body. He taught me in those long hours that I was worthless, a stupid little Weasley that no one would ever love. He told me that the only one who would ever think anything of me was him. And he made me believe it.  
  
With his soft words, muttered phrases, harsh endearments, he made me realize that he was right. And he made me love him. I know that everyone will think that I couldn't have loved him since he did so much to me, made me do so much, but I did. He could also be so sweet, when it suited him, that I would forget everything that he had said. And he made me believe that he loved me too. While he was telling me that I was worthless to the world, he told me I would always be precious to him, his sweet little Ginny forever. And so I am, and will always be. And even then, I knew I would never be the same.  
  
I once tried to date Harry, the ever-sweet Harry, but I could never make myself feel for him what I should have. He asked me, while he was breaking up with me, why I had never loved him, why I could never open up to him and his tender attentions. I didn't tell him at the time, I didn't know what to say.  
  
If I had to answer him now, I would tell him that it was because he had taught me to not understand tenderness. I had learned early in love that I wasn't worth being nice to, and the only one who could ever care anything about me was him, my Tom.  
  
When Tom touched me, I felt my whole body electrified. It's hard to imagine that I could be so affected when I was so young, but I was. When he hurt me, all I could do was ask for more. He was so rarely gentile, and to tell the truth, I preferred that he not be. He taught me to love the pain that only he could afflict. I was a game to him, a lesson in how to break a girl. And he did. He broke me so badly that the pieces will never again be whole.  
  
It was never like that with Harry. No matter how hard he tried, I just couldn't feel anything for him. He was just the man who came after Tom, and he could never be anything else. Ever.  
  
It's so sad to have fallen so completely in love and been broken so completely at so early an age. That means that there is no hope of happiness for me. I can never be loved as much as I was in that short time with Tom. I can never be affected by another so long as I still have the memories of Tom's touch in my mind. I can never give my heart to someone else, because I never got it back.  
  
I was broken, and I don't know how to fix it. In fact, I know that I can't. I will never be whole again. The darkness burned me, scarred me and left me begging for more. But I can never have more, because the darkness I now crave is gone, buried forever, lost with the memory of Him.  
  
I watch with jealous eyes as the girls in my dorm get ready for some social function or another. I think that it was the Yule ball again. I wonder what it must be like to be like them, so innocent, so wholly absorbed in the present, with no past to haunt them. I mechanically mimic their motions, putting on a dress, brushing my hair, applying cosmetic charms, but I am not like them. I am not, like they are, absorbed in this moment. This moment is not where I dwell; I dwell in a past I can't touch.  
  
I feel like an ice maiden as I finish getting ready. I am locked so far up in my cold, stone tower that no one can get in, and that is the way it has to be. There is no other choice. We are the hollow men, I heard said once, and it is true. I am hollower than the rest of them are full. The darkness stripped me of all that was me and left me with nothing, nothing but an empty shell that talks and laughs but feels nothing but pain and loneliness.  
  
I look once more in the mirror and see a stranger, one who is laughing and joking with the other people in the room. She is happy and beautiful. She is warm and real. Except the eyes. The eyes are windows to the soul, and hers are dead. The big chestnut orbs look glassily out from the mask of the face, betraying to those who know what to look for an emptiness, a bottomless pit where there is depth, but no life.  
  
I look away from the pathetic image and go back to the pretense I have built for myself. We go as a group to the bottom of the stairs, splintering off to join our dates, the lucky boys who will have the privilege of escorting us to the ball.  
  
I make my mouth smile at the others, telling them that I'll see them at the ball, but that I have to go and meet my date, a sweet Hufflepuff who had been so nervous and awkward when he asked me to accompany him. Not at all like Tom would have done. In fact, Tom wouldn't have asked at all. He would have just assumed that I was his property and would of course do his bidding. And he would have been right.  
  
My feet took me to the place where I was to meet the unfortunate boy who would be my date. As I walked, I could already see how this would progress. We would get to the ball, eat dinner, and the dancing would start. I would start with him, but I could never stay with just one partner. I guess when you have no feelings left; you don't care whose you hurt.  
  
He would be a little hurt that I kept leaving him, but would still be interested. They always were. At the end of the night, he would try to get a kiss, some token of affection for him, but I would pull away, run back to my safe haven of emptiness where I would not feel as though I were betraying Tom.  
  
The hapless boy would think that I was just modest and would keep trying to get to me, but would eventually give up when he realized that there was no chance, and that I was avoiding him for a reason. He would wonder for days, maybe even weeks, what he had done wrong to make me flee him like I did? But there is of course no answer that would satisfy him. The only answer I could give him is that he isn't Tom.  
  
I walked out into the hallway where we had agreed to meet, and there he was, the sweet boy whose name I could hardly remember and cared less. He had a white rose in his hand, and my mouth smiled at the gesture. Very sweet.  
  
He held the flower out to me and I took it. The stem was long, too long, so I broke the stem of the flower with a snap like the breaking of a neck. I tucked the flower behind my ear and took the arm he held to me. I threw the stem to the floor and watched it fall, pathetic, ruined.  
  
I saw him out of the corner of my eye as he kept looking at me with an expression of awe. I knew what he was thinking; it was plain upon his face. I almost smiled at it all. His face was an open book, and I could read his every thought, every emotion like it was text from the pages of a diary.  
  
I thought of my own face, so happy and cheerful, but so deceitful at the same time. I wondered if he was guessing at my own thoughts from the look on my face. I knew if he was guessing, he was guessing wrong. There was no way he could know about what went on beneath my eyes. No one could.  
  
Before I knew it, we were there. I looked around at the happy faces, and knew that mine was just another of them. I felt so detached from the sea of joy that I almost felt nauseated. It took all I had to control my gag reflex.  
  
In the sea of faces, I recognized a dozen other boys who I had done the same thing to that I was doing to this new one. I could see sympathy in their eyes as they looked at my evening's date. They knew as well as I did what would become of our lovely evening. Nothing.  
  
I felt myself being ushered to a table full of Hufflepuffs, where my date proceeded to make introductions. I nodded politely to the people, knowing that I wouldn't remember a single one of their names, and that by the next day, I would have forgotten them altogether.  
  
The evening began, of course, exactly as I had predicted. There was a meal, the finest that the house elves could have made. There was a lot of chatting and joking, which I forced myself to take part in. And, as per usual, the dance floor cleared as soon as everyone had had their fill.  
  
The first dance began, and I allowed myself to be clasped to the Hufflepuff. My quickly bruised toes proved that this boy was no better than Neville had been my third year. I longed for the dance to soon be over so I could move on to the next person in my path, longed for the song's end to silently toll a partner change.  
  
After what seemed like an eternity in the arms of the clumsy boy, the song was over. I bowed a little to give me a little distance, and found myself swept up into the arms of someone nearby. I waved a farewell to my date and looked up at my new partner. I almost gasped as I saw the last person I would have expected. Draco Malfoy.  
  
His eyes caught mine, and I was shocked. His eyes were just as cold and distant as mine were, maybe even more so. And what was more, the way he looked at me, like I barely existed to him, like I didn't matter at all. The look resembled so much the look Tom had always bestowed on me that I shivered.  
  
And the way he held me, like I was merely a toy of his to be picked up and put away at will, almost frightened me, it was so familiar. For the first time in six years, I almost felt alive. I almost felt like I was back to the person I had been before, so similar was the feel of him against me.  
  
For the duration of the dance, I felt as if I was a puppet to the will of Draco, a doll to be moved and positioned where he chose. His graceful movements oozed elegance and grace, and his easy possession of me screamed domination, total control. And he barely even looked at me.  
  
When the song ended, I expected to be handed off to the next partner, returned to my original icy state, but instead, Draco did not let me go. He kept possession of me as the music began again. We danced this way for what seemed like hours, days, eons.  
  
I was very surprised when we finally stopped moving to find myself in the rose garden. I had been so wrapped up in our dance that I hadn't noticed being steered away.  
  
I looked up into Draco's slate gray eyes. They were hard and cold in the moonlight, possessive and possessing. I wasn't surprised when he leaned in to kiss me. I was surprised that I let him, and more surprised at how I felt when he did. I felt, and that was more than I had done for so long. When he broke our kiss, I found myself clinging to him, holding on to him as if he were an anchor to my sanity. More like an anchor to my reality.  
  
Somehow, in a blur of corridors and people, I found myself in the dungeons, in his rooms. When he touched me, I felt Tom's touch. It drew me out of the prison where I'd been locked since I had been broken, so long ago. When he spoke, it was with Tom's voice. He told me the same things Tom had, and I knew that they had to be true. He touched me with the same fingers, and I felt myself electrified beyond anything I'd ever felt before. And when he took me, it was like a thousand promised fulfilled and a thousand doors opened. I knew that this was all right, that in his arms, I would become real again, alive.  
  
Once broken, twice redeemed. I had touched the darkness again, and this time, it saved me. It made me whole. It fixed that which was broken, rescued the parts of me that had been locked away since my first brush with darkness. Where Tom had only destroyed, now Draco repaired. And I knew my life would never be the same.  
  
~*~ Finis ~*~ 


End file.
